Sunday, February 21, 2010

Skeletons


Apparently we have won a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Although when I hear that it is for something called the skeleton at a place called whistles, or is it whistler, I wonder if I have slipped into an alternative reality. Perfectly nice young woman on the news last night and it seems all she had to do was lie down and try and hang on while a very slippy world rushed by and do it faster than everyone else. I think I may have been training for that all my life; certainly the last 18 months or so have felt very close to zooming down the slippery slope; with lots of apres ski and mulled wine thrown in of course.

Strangely I didn't get the usual gripping lump in my throat when they showed her Mom cheering her on and eventually giving her the celebratory hug. I think it may have been because said Mom was decked out like a tea cosy and as warm and wonderful as they are I have never had much empathy with them.

Morphing from sports news into fashion comment then as it is London fashion week and I have to keep up with the trends. Off the catwalks I have noticed a sad decline in winter wear this year; although as I never pay much regard to what is in or out probably it has been going on for decades. We have had a lot of snow this year and we were in very cold Dresden in December and surprisingly cold Dordogne in January. In all these places freezing temperatures are sadly no longer a trigger to get out beautiful long coats and furry (fake of course) hats. Instead there is the universal, unisex duvet look, sometimes declining to the tea cosy of our skeleton champion's proud Mom in Whistler (yes of course Whistler's Mom!). I call it sad, now we have some decent snow and icicles and stuff, I want to see women in astrakhan, in camel, in alpaca; in magnificent sweeping dress coats, bearing muffs and men in greatcoats or capes, sporting earmuffs and frozen moustaches. OK I fell in love with Omar Sharif in Dr Zhivago forty years ago and I have never been the same since.

Anyway I look like the Michelin man without recourse to a puffed up jacket so as it's snowed again overnight, today I am dragging out my very old, very long camel coat. I will make my own fashion statement and like Amy Williams on her luge I will do a death defying lunge into the whiteness; even if for me that only means walking round the corner for the paper. As for the skeletons the only ones I have thus far are securely locked away in cupboards, along with a few tea cosies and of course, my candle, still burning brightly for Dr Z.



PS I have not been able to get into any emails since yesterday morning, maybe its the weather! so if you have been, thanks for emailing and I will answer when the thaw sets in.

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